Today we start our morning early, but we stay in. I take advantage of Ioan’s school and wash more laundry, and do small things.
When we finally emerge from our apartment, we take the subway to Ueno Park. Next to a bus station there is a big map of the park. Though we have an ipad and internet and we could orient ourselves from that, we choose to look at that map. And while we are looking at it, I notice two men, quietly washing its frame, small movements, no drips. If we wouldn’t have stopped to look at the map, I wouldn’t have known that they were there, working. But as we are here, I feel like I am not letting them work. It amazes me, because in my mind I compare it with a similar one in Romania or in USA (not that I have seen or heard of washing the frame of a street map). In Romania, IF someone would do this job, it would be visible from a distance, an obvious fuss, “Look at me, I’m working”. In USA no one would bother, that’s why we have rain, but, still, if they would have to do it, they would use a power washer.
First stop: National Museum of Western Art. We know that the building is on the waiting list of World Heritage Sites. It was build by Le Corbusier in 1951 to house the Matsukata collections.
